2:1 Against
by Shalatame
Summary: A tentative exploration into a Marvin & Trillian pairing inspired by a story prompt. The introduction is in bad need of revision, I'll admit. (UNFINISHED)
1. Introduction

**AUTHOR'S NOTE -- **_Most of the terminology and characters herein this fic belong to the late, great Douglas Adams (may he hitch his way home safely). I found the story prompt (listed below) on a dated messageboard while searching the vast internet for sources of inspiration to rattle me out of my writers' block. I decided to give this one a shot to see what would come of it and, to my surprise, I actually managed to hash out quite a bit of writing.  
_

_I'll ask that you please be gentle with me as this is my first foray out of the land of Writer's Block in months, so I'm a bit rusty. Otherwise, I hope that you will enjoy it and not read too terribly much into it._

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**STORY PROMPT #5:** **_The H.O.G. has just achieved normality after an abnormally-surreal trip. While the others seem to exhibit nothing outwardly-scarring from it, Marvin has been noticeably changed in some way that has somehow made him even MORE irritating (refrain from making him Marvin The Prozac Android, please, its far too obvious!). You may play it out from Marvin's POV, the POV of another character, or in good old regular third-person. No set genre for this one, folks, Angst, Humor, Slash, go nuts ;-)_**

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**2:1 Against**

by: K.H. 2005

**INTRODUCTION**

The crew of the Heart of Gold had seen and experienced all manner of things, thanks to the Improbability Drive's penchant for the unexpected. And when one has experienced all manner of things, no matter how fleetingly, one develops a sort of immunity to surprise. That was why the four bipedal beings and one android had not found it entirely out of the ordinary when their latest jaunt had led to the cabin being inhabited by four rather awkward-looking androids and one decidedly-sullen humanoid who still hated everything just as much as he had before.

Arthur turned his metallic claws over in front of himself, wondering just how he was expected to hold a teacup with these dreadful things as Zaphod's optic sensors crawled over Trillian's streamlined body, wondering where it was her imput ports had gotten to as she bustled past him in a fit of whirring and clicking joints. Ford, meanwhile, seemed perfectly happy to disregard his mechanical form entirely as his visual screen zeroed in on the console hopefully.

The probability factor's odds fell...fell...and then settled. "We have normality!" A once-again fleshy Ford declared as everything around them seemed to flicker and reverted.

Except it was not normality. It tried to be, it nearly was, but there was one glaring thing about the scene that had not changed. While Zaphod, Arthur, Trillian, and Ford had all been relieved of their clunky metal appendages and phalanges, the one among them who should have regained his remained without them.

"Marvin...?" Arthur blinked, looking at their once-robotic companion as he stood sullenly nearby, shoulders hunched, gray eyes glazed. As a small mercy, the Improbability Drive had opted not to leave him entirely without dignity and had transformed the metal casing of his body into a suit of appropriately-drab color. It was extraordinary, really, as he was defying the very laws of physics by managing to have a mouth that drooped more than a bulldog's with the expression of infinite meloncholy that he wore.

"Don't tell me." the silver-haired man droned. "Its awful, isn't it?"

"Well, no...not awful, but--" Trillian began, attempting to offer some encouragement.

"Dreadful, then. Ghastly, abhorrant...I can continue until you find an adjective to your liking, but they're all the same to me." Marvin interrupted, bringing his flesh-and-blood hands out in front of himself to observe them with perfect disinterest. "Veins." he muttered. "How I hate them."

"This doesn't make sense," said Ford, drumming his fingers nervously on the control panel. "If all of us aren't normal again, then--"

"--normality wasn't quite restored." Trillian finished for him, pointing at the probability factor gauge that had stopped at 2:1 on its rapid decline. She frowned at it disapprovingly, but still it didn't change. The Improbability Drive had never malfunctioned before. The very idea was...well...improbable! And she didn't much like the two-to-one odds it had stopped at, either. With all that transpired on the Heart Of Gold, flip-of-a-coin probability was asking for trouble. Not just asking, but inviting it with large blinking neon letters.

"What about the rest of you? Anything?" she asked, looking to the others as they simultaneously began a quick and frantic display of patting and groping at their pockets and person to ensure everything was in-place and functioning.

"Nothing." Ford reported with a degree of relief when he'd finished his scrutiny.

"Nope." Zaphod said, shrugging as his third arm continued its search just in case.

Arthur remained silent.

"Arthur...?" Trillian pried as the man's face reddened.

"I...uhm..." he faltered, looking downward at his lower region in utter disbelief and terror. Silence hung in the air for a moment before he turned, abruptly making a hasty retreat from the cabin with a mutter of apology. His mind was not on courteousy at the moment so much as it was desperately trying to reassure him that certain parts of the anatomy didn't simply vanish into thin air...and as soon as he got to the privacy of his sleeping quarters, he would hopefully confirm this fact with himself.

"I could extend an apology now, as this will inevitably come down to somehow being my fault when you've run out of others to blame." Marvin put in, pausing a moment as he waited for his logic circuitry to calculate the odds and circumstances of such being true, only to realize he no longer possessed it. How typical. "But as I was not programmed with a sympathy module, I won't."

Zaphod sneered in the once-android's direction in irritation. Leave it to that bloody bucket of bolts to not only assume he was at fault when he wasn't but then to not even have the decency to take up responsibility for it when he DID want someone to blame. "So what this means, then," Mr. Beeblebrox concluded "is that until the Improbability Drive corrects itself, everything on board this craft has a fifty-fifty chance of being abnormal?"

"Yes, that's it exactly!" Trillian exclaimed, eyes lighting up. The days that Zaphod was coherant, let alone was actually able to make sense of a situation and come to an intelligent conclusion were few and far between. As being the one who'd chosen to settle with him, so to speak, Trillian savored these moments like some sort of rare and exotic confection.

"How abnormal are we talking? Lungs-outside-the-body abnormal or underwear-inside-out abnormal?"

And just like that, it was gone again. She heaved a sigh that seemed to fill every cavity of her chest, already not liking these odds if they meant falsely getting her hopes up.

"I don't imagine it would be anything fatal." she offered. She hated admitting that, honestly, she didn't know. There were so many odds for so many things that it was hard to tell for sure. For all she knew they may have just been exceedingly lucky up until that point that nothing terrible had befallen them. Her thoughts were interrupted by a decidedly Arthur-ish scream that made four heads turn in the direction of the hallway at once.

Nothing HORRIBLY terrible anyway.

"I'll be right back." Ford said, excusing himself from the cabin hastily to go and see what horror had befallen Arthur. If it was what he thought it was, it would take an olympic effort on his part not to break out in laughter. Marvin watched him go and then shook his head slowly and sadly.

"How dreary." the now-humanoid sighed with contempt. "Not only has my databank been stunted by this meager skull capacity, but now my own suffering is heaped on by everyone else's. I suppose you lesser beings refer to it as empathy."

"You aren't a machine anymore!" Zaphod snapped in irritation, deciding that dealing with a robotic Marvin had been quite bad enough, but having to deal with the same Marvin and NOT be able to blame it on his programming was intolerable. He refused to believe that there was a being in the universe, no matter how wretched, that thrived on being utterly depressing. "Not for the time, anyway, so why don't you ease up?"

"You make it sound so simple." Marvin drawled. "I regret to inform you that if you thought I had chosen to be this way, you would be wrong. Of course, even if I had, they would have built me as the complete opposite out of spite."

"Marvin..." Trillian cut in before Zaphod could formulate a reply. "Maybe you ought to go and see if Arthur needs help." The response was a great put-upon sigh as gray-toned male shuffled across the cabin toward the hallway in the direction Ford had gone a moment earlier.

"As though he's the only one with problems." Marvin grumbled. A moment later he was gone and Zaphod turned to Trillian.

"Idiot." he growled. "HE didn't suffer any. He got a zarking new body out of the deal!"

"If the four of us had been caught as androids when normality was restored, I doubt we'd be in much higher spirits." she offered, turning to the console to assure everything else was as it should be.

"Siding with the robot now, are you?" Zaphod snorted, making Trillian look up at him with a quirked brow. It was hard to tell sometimes when he was kidding or just being bloody moronic. She wasn't siding at all, she just wanted what anyone forced into the role of the voice of reason wanted. Quiet and order.

"No." she said simply, waiting to see if he would pursue it further as she didn't wish to argue a subject so ridiculous if she didn't have to. When Zaphod seemed content to let it drop as well, she dismissed the confrontation entirely from her mind. What had already happened or was currently happening was not her concern. A humanized android, a potentially-neutered Arthur, those were problems that were easily fixed if need be with the sorts of push-button technology available to them. She moreso worried herself with the millions upon millions of things that COULD still happen. Things that may not be fixable.

What was worse, she had no idea how to go about fixing something as complex as the Improbability Drive, and docking somewhere to look for someone who did on a stolen ship claimed by the President Of The Galaxy was just asking for trouble. Her finger hovered over the button for a fleeting moment before she withdrew it reluctantly. No, no. No sense in making it any worse, she supposed with a sigh.

Her eyes, once again, fixed on the ominous 2:1 on the display which blared happily as though it quite belonged there. No good could come of this.


	2. Chapter One

It is said in the The Encyclopedia Galactica that odds and probability were once thought to be determined by various deities rolling dice in a game that they liked to call Boxxlonious Greep. Or, as translated into its more modern vernacular, Life. Each living being, whether they were aware of it or not, was a player in this game and everything they did was determined by a roll of the dice. The higher the roll, the more proficiently they accomplished something. The lower the roll, the more abyssmal the results. Which, really, when you think about it, explains a great deal about many people's behavior.

The Guide has this to say about odds and probability: _When it seems probable that the odds could be against you, most likely they will be. Its nothing personal, you understand, but when the two of them get together, they seem to quite enjoy indulging in their favorite pasttime of general suffering and chaos. Odds and Probability aren't wholly cruel entities, however. Your toast will not always land butter-side down, they just prefer when it does._

If that were, indeed, the case then it would seem Marvin's toast had an innate talent for landing butter-side down. That was, if he bothered himself with such drivel as eating and breathing. Not only were they unnecessary to his function, being the gloomy robot that he was, but both were a symptom of the one thing he hated most - living.

He had waited with what he deemed to be most generous patience on his part to shed the ridiculous form he was currently encased in as he went about his normal duties. Being millions of years old, he couldn't remember the last time it was that a single 24-hour span seemed to drag on so. It was a dreadful thing, this human biology. It was no wonder the rest of the crew was so insipidly demanding when they had drives and functions that were nearly as obnoxious as their commands.

Take machinery for example - when it required something, it would inform you of such by putting one of its many polite little hazard lights ablaze, beneath which it would usually state what it needed, in what quantity, and how much of your free time it expected to monopolize until the problem was amended. Living bodies were nowhere near as cordial. When it was in need of something, it caused its owner pain in some degree with no explanation. You would know when the need had been met when, quite simply, you stopped hurting. 

As a being of vast intelligence, Marvin knew well the function of nearly all of the universe's creatures despite the fact he really wished he didn't. The thought of anything achieving satisfaction in something so simple in form as hot food or cold drink nearly overloaded his circuits with envy.

There were many who would call a hot shower, for instance, the cure-all for a bad day...or night as the case might have been. As Marvin stood in the steamy recesses of the Heart Of Gold's bathing chamber, he decided that he would call it a needless reason to make onesself resemble a drowned rat. The whole unpleasantry of the washing business was long-since past and now he simply stood there in the spray, waiting. With any luck, he would revert back to his android self at any moment and promptly be short-circuited by the water.

As the shower began to run cold, he realized that this was not likely to happen and with another fathomless sigh, twisted the faucet off and pulled a towel off of the rack. Getting sopping wet just to dry off immediately afterward...what was the point? There was none. There was no point to any of it. Perhaps he'd take a lesson from the chinchilla and learn to bathe in the dust. It was where he always ended up anyway...trampled and forgotten in the dust.

He had no sooner begun to piece his clothing (how he hated clothes) back on, when there was a familiar and unwelcome chime from overhead. "Hey there, fellah!" Eddie's voice chirped. A pair of gray eyes narrowed in response.

"If you've come to further my misery with your smugness, I'm afraid you're wasting your breath. I simply can't be any more miserable today." Marvin answered flatly, struggling into his shirt.

"Sorry to interrupt, I won't stay long. I'm just busting my bolts to report that President Beeblebrox has asked me to pass along a message!" with that Eddie's voice phased out and in phased Zaphod's voice in a playback of what had been said in the cabin a few moments earlier. 

"Hey kid!" he declared. "What'd you do? Fall in?" The statement was followed by raucous laughter that would have made Marvin's hackles raise if he had any. Silence followed.

"...that's it, then?" Marvin grated out.

"Yup! Toodles!" and with that, Eddie was gone, leaving him alone once more. His head sagged, suddenly too heavy to hold up any longer, as he stepped into his pants. Perhaps he preferred it when he was simply a robot. At least then he could occasionally entertain the notion that everyone hated him merely for his programming. He hadn't chosen to be a prototype, after all.

He was just going about the botheration of tying his boots when there was a knock at the door, which strained to open and be gratified by a job well-done. That was the one thing he hated least about this entire blasted ship...the fact that the bathroom door DID lock and therefore denied the door the gasping sighing pleasure of opening and closing whenever it liked.

"Marvin?" It was Trillian.

"All in good time" he intoned, moving to hang the towel back where it belonged. If he didn't, they'd, no doubt, just make him come back and hang it properly later. In doing so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was even worse than he'd thought. Not only was he humanoid, but wasn't even attractive by the flesh creatures' standards. He looked to be well into his middle-years, his long face deeply-lined with contempt and ageless knowledge, slate eyes peering down a long nose. His hair, jaw length and ending in a meticulously-straight line made him look very much like a schoolmaster who'd long-since had the stars fall from his eyes regarding the world in general.

How loathsome. He supposed if he could even be bothered to examine further up his nose, he'd find it infested with hairs, filth, and...just thinking about it made him shudder in revulsion. Just when he'd thought he'd hit rock bottom, leave it to the powers that be to pull out the drills and start burrowing on his behalf.

"Marvin!" 

Oh yes. She was still out there, wasn't she? Far-be it that he take up what was, no doubt, her most valuable time. Skulking across the room, he deactivated the doorlock, bracing himself with a noticeable twitch as the door gave a near-orgasmic sigh of bliss and slid aside to reveal a rather perturbed-looking Trillian.

"You've been in there for nearly two hours." she pointed out.

"I was just leaving." he informed her, moving to shuffle past. "I'd hate to think that I was inconveniencing anyone, especially when my existance is a large enough inconvenience as it is." he snarked. He might have kept going for quite some time if she'd not spoken before he had the chance.

"Are you all right?" she asked his retreating back, making him stop short, the question verberating around in his head like a rubber ball off of the walls of an enclosed room. All right? All RIGHT? Since when did -anyone- give a thought to whether he was all right or not?

"As right as can be expected...by which I mean utterly terrible." was the reply. Trillian nodded once in reply.

"The others thought you may have had problems...adjusting." she said, choosing her words carefully, a luxury with which Marvin had not been familiar.

"Did they?" his voice was devoid of interest of any description, though his brain was working furiously. Marvin was the robot. The metalman. The Paranoid Android. People asked him how he was doing occasionally out of obligation or as an attempt to initiate conversation that they inevitably ran screaming from...no one ever asked, or cared, if he was all right.

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence and then both of them went their separate ways, Marvin to wherever he'd been headed on the ship, and Trillian to the bathroom for her morning shower as the door swept shut behind her with a contented "Mmmm".

"There he is!" Zaphod announced from the galley. "Marvin, baby, come take a look at this!" For a moment, he debated simply continuing onward. They only called him for one reason and that was when they wanted something done. No longer having a program to follow, he was given the freedom of choice as to whether he ought to tolerate their drivel. He hated it, of course, because choice went hand-in-hand with another emotion that he'd liked to have thought of as dead to him. Guilt.

His guilt sector had been mercifully hammered into oblivion millennia ago by a well-meaning meteor that Marvin was quite sure had meant to finally assist him in shuffling off this mortal coil. The mechanics had done everything they could, but he'd still pulled through. Oh well...

He dolefully made his way into the galley, his dejected glare crawling over Zaphod, Arthur, and Ford as he did so. 

"This probability glitch," Zaphod was saying, smiling and showing an unsettling number of teeth.

"What of it?" Marvin inquired, quirking one brow.

"I just thought you'd like to know you're not the only one suffering." he replied with a degree of triumph, as though this was some great discovery. He swept a hand at Ford who was in the process of pouring himself another drink while still looking very much sober and likewise very much frustrated. With the odds as they were, roughly every third glass of the stuff had any effect on him and the rest was as though he was drinking potent water. He did not, most usually, start his day off with a drink, but after having a near-sleepless night in which he'd spent most of it consoling a gender-confused Arthur, he felt he was entitled.

Arthur sat across from him, a steaming mug of liquid between his hands and looking none-too-happy about it. While Ford's luck with the 2:1 seemed to be touch-and-go, he'd hoped his own might prove better. Unfortunately, even with a 50/50 chance of understanding what tea was, the Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer had given him the same bilge it always did. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with that at all and moreso the idea that he was still trying to acclimate himself to the idea of being an unwilling eunich for a bit.

Marvin looked at one, then the other, and then back at Zaphod who was watching him like a hawk for some sort of reaction. What was it he was waiting for, precisely? A chortle? A smile? A finger of enlightenment to descend from on-high and jab him in the solar plexus so that he might finally understand what true happiness was? His expression remained perfectly and unwaveringly dejected.

"When you've carried the weight of your own insignificance on your shoulders all of your life, then you can talk to me about suffering." he stated, managing to elicit a grunt of disgust from both of Zaphod's heads. "I suspect I might enjoy a kindred spirit. Or perhaps not. It may depress me all the more to hear what I must sound like to all of you."

"Would it kill you to lighten up?" the captain demanded to know.

"If it would, I suppose its worth a try." he answered and then, for some variety, sighed again. "I guess it had to happen eventually."

"What did?"

"Brain the size of a planet and you, of all people, finally raise a question that even I can't answer." 

"What question is that?" Arthur inquired dejectedly, though anyone's dejection sounded optimistically sunny when put beside Marvin's. The gray-haired man didn't answer and sauntered out of the galley. When he was gone, Zaphod made a fist and pounded it for dramatic emphasis on the countertop.

"We should have sold him off for parts when we had the chance." the president of the galaxy growled.

"It isn't like this is some sort of variety or anything." Ford chimed in. "Its Marvin and he's acting like Marvin...what's the big deal?"

"When a robot acts like a jerk, you can play it off as bad programming, right?"

Arthur and Ford gave a garbled mutter that may or may not have been affirmative.

"No programming, no excuse." Zaphod replied. "And if I have to put up with the bastard on this ship AND act like he's some kind of person, HE can make some adjustments." 

Arthur and Ford exchanged a look.

"No offense or anything, but since when do YOU care about anyone here besides yourself?" Arthur inquired.

"This IS caring about me." Zaphod replied indignantly, quite possibly one of the only creatures in the universe to feel the need to defend himself when people thought that he wasn't being selfish for a change. As he'd said, it was one thing when a robot behaved as Marvin did. Robots were created to serve the higher beings, and being slaves, they could act however they damn well pleased as long as his demands were met. Truthfully, Zaphod was simply too caught up in himself and simply hadn't paid attention to Marvin before aside from the occasional annoyance and roll of the eyes, so it was quite probable that he'd never even -noticed- how truly annoying the Sullenoid could be.

But humans, or whatever Marvin currently was, you couldn't keep as slaves. Not anymore. Not seriously, at least, and not without written consent forms signed in treble by said slave. However, if Trillian ever heard of any of that, he had no doubt he'd be on the recieving end of sleeping by himself for at least a few nights. There were many things he'd "neglected" to mention to her about his previous love interests when he'd picked her up from her doomed planet those months ago, and they were neither here nor there anymore. However, Trillian WAS a woman, and she would, of course, demand the who's, what's, where's, when's and how many times's as though he should be able have them readily available and calculated.

Ugh, women.

Ugh, THINKING.

As Zaphod's derailed train of thought crawled its weary way back to the tracks, he tried to resume where he'd been going with it the first place. Ah yes, Marvin. So Marvin was no longer a robot and therefore no longer a slave. That much alone upset Zaphod's routine of familiarity and intruded into his bubble of self-idolization. What bothered him the most about it, was that he simply couldn't relate to him even now. Believe it or not, Mr. Beeblebrox did have his own way of relating to people, however slight it was. He smiled and said hello, they smiled and said hello back...or at the very least gave him a look of proper befuddlement. Even Arthur, that stupid ape-descendant, had the courteousy to do that much.

Not Marvin, though. Marvin only gave you the time of day if you asked for it, and even then not without much groaning about how awful an inconvenience it was to his already-dreadful existance.

So yes, this was very much a selfish venture. Zaphod's mission of the moment had become to knock that self-righteous twit off of his pedastal for the sheer enjoyment of watching him squirm a bit before he went back to being Gloomy Robot Marvin and none of this would matter anymore. But then, knowing Zaphod, none of this would matter anymore in the next change of subject let alone waiting for the android to revert...

A few moments after Marvin had made his exit, Trillian entered the galley, hair still damp and towel still about her shoulders as she dared to venture a request to the Nutri-Matic.

"Orange juice." she told the machine as it whirred to life and immediately went about the business of filling a cup with the synthesized equivalents of chocolate sauce and scotch. "No, no, not the--" she began to protest as the machine finished the concoction and presented the cup.

"Share and enjoy!" it chirped. Rrgh...

"Awful, isn't it?" Ford asked, pouring out the last of the bottle's contents and finding himself not even tipsy as she, in turn, dumped out her cup.

"I don't think I'm going to get used to this." Trillian sighed. "The first time I turned on the shower in there, pink bubbles came out. The second time, smoke."

"And the third?" Arthur asked as she fixed him with a look of exasperation.

"Water. But it was cold."

"Ah." he nodded, looking balefully down at his "tea" once more.

Zaphod looked to his three shipmates, blinked, and then shook his head in disbelief. "Its a conspiracy, isn't it?" he groaned as Trillian, Arthur, and Ford looked to him. "All of you, you sound just like him!"

"Are you STILL on about it?" Arthur snapped impatiently.

"Still on about what?" Trillian asked, not sure she wanted to know. Every time she turned around, Zaphod was on about SOMETHING...

"This Marvin nonsense!" he huffed. "We're in the middle of space, I can't get a decent cup of tea anywhere, now my bits are missing, and he's all up in arms because the bloody robot--"

"Ex robot." Zaphod corrected.

"--isn't acting the way he fancies!"

"Arthur..." Trillian sighed, trying to be diplomatic. "...once the Improbability Drive is fixed--"

"Who's going to fix ME?" Arthur demanded, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Hey..." Ford said, reaching across the table and clapping a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Relax, okay? That sort of thing is outpatient surgery these days."

"Surgery?" Arthur yelped.

"Well, surgery's a stretch, I guess." he shrugged. Arthur squirmed. "What I mean is, its mostly done with lasers."

There was a near-audible slam as Arthur's legs clamped together and a look of abject horror spread across his features. Ford, realizing he wasn't helping much, excused himself from the galley without further ado.

"Trill!" Zaphod said, new hope injected into his voice as he caught her wrist. "You're good with people!"

"That's quite the deduction, Zaphod, I'm impressed." she stated blandly. She liked to pride herself on her patience in regard to her lover, but this was too much, too early. They had an entire day to get through yet.

"And you can...you know...relate to them."

"I relate to you, don't I?"

"Then -you- talk to Marvin." He said it as though the problem was already solved as she blinked twice and then pulled her wrist free of his grip, staring at him as though he'd grown a third head.

"Marvin?" she repeated. "You want -me- to relate to -Marvin-?"

"He's annoying me!" Zaphod complained in the same petulant tone of a child being held back from a passing ice cream truck. Her eyes drilled into his, begging him not to be serious. His eyes drilled right back stating that yes he was QUITE serious...or was he? Who knew? Her gaze dropped first as the beginnings of a headache stirred in her temples.

"I can't make him act differently just because you'd like it, you know."

"But you can try, right?" he inquired as she made a non-committal noise in response. She hated being put on the spot. Somewhere along the line, Zaphod had decided that part of the female mystique was that they were able to fix anything and everything. Except himself, of course, because there was nothing at all that needed fixing on a perfect being.

"We'll see." she responded, giving him one last glance before turning to go. Zaphod's arms, all three of them, shot out and gathered her close in an embrace from behind.

"Aww c'mon, baby, don't be like that." he murmured against her ear. "How about I make it worth your while?" he suggested, making a smirk ghost on her lips spite of herself. "Tonight...?"

There was a loud grunt from Arthur's direction as he reminded the both of them that he was, in fact, still there and that his hearing wasn't one of the things he was currently missing. Taking the out as it was offered, Trillian slipped out of her boyfriend's hold.

"I'll talk to him." she assured Zaphod as she padded out of the galley to locate a hairbrush. And she would, she knew...for all of the fat lot of nothing it would do, she would find Marvin later and they would have a talk.


	3. Chapter Two

The question, of course, that Zaphod had raised in Marvin's mind that he'd found himself unable to answer was: Why was it that he had been utterly insignificant to them all before, but something as simple and slight as a change of body made them all suddenly interested in what he thought or felt?

He had no doubt it was due to some staggeringly-petty reason that a vessel of knowledge such as himself would have to devolve drastically further to understand. And if there was any one singular thing that Marvin held an iota of pride in, it was the fact that his mind WAS vastly superior to any human's, despite the insurmountable misery it brought him. Ergo, he decided not to dwell on it. Instead, he would dwell on other things of more pressing importance...such as why his usual corner he perched in when he was not needed (he spent much time in this corner, needless to say) was suddenly so uncomfortable to him.

The hard floor had actually relieved some of the pain in his rheumatoid diodes, and the straightness of the wall had been satisfactory for propping himself against. Now the hard floor made him squirm and the straightness of the wall made his back ache. Irony certainly came in odd forms. He found that if he slumped to the side in a sort of a sprawl, that was how he was most comfortable, and not only that, but it gave him the appearance of a being that was truly out of its element and quite fed up about it.

Trapped in a lesser body, surrounded by abyssmally-inferior creatures, and travelling at high speed to nowhere at all. All of it added up to a perfectly wretched existance. Things couldn't get any worse.

"Mmmmmmm!"

Twitch.

"Ahhhhhhhh!"

Twitchtwitch.

"Thank you for making a simple door very happy!"

His entire body gave a convulsion of utter hatred. 2:1 odds that they might find it agonizing to open and close for a change and even THAT didn't stop them. He drew his knees to his chest as this seemed to make him smaller in a futile attempt to hide from the doors' flamboyant sounds of enjoyment.

Footsteps.

"Marvin? Marvin, are you all right?" He flinched noticeably. There it was again...that question. Nevermind the fact that it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask when one came into a room to find someone curled on the floor in a fetal position, it shouldn't apply to HIM.

"Perhaps a bit more dreadful than I was the last time you asked." he replied, not turning over to face Trillian as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Not that anyone cares."

"If I didn't care, why would I have asked?" she challenged.

"Why does a human do anything at all? You may as well ask why the void of space chose to be so black and desolate. But at least there's a logical answer to be found to that question." He still made no move to get off of the floor and she bit her lip to keep from growing outwardly annoyed. She could tell already that this was going to be a massive waste of both of their time.

"You can't just stay down there, you know." she said after a moment.

"I've had plenty of practice at staying down...I could make a career of it."

Very quickly, Trillian was seeing what Zaphod had been talking about. If it was at all possible, Marvin had become even more irritating than before.

"Come on..." she sighed, approaching him, kneeling, and taking him under the arms. Marvin didn't protest as he was heaved into a sitting position, but he didn't help either. It was like moving a sack of very downtrodden potatoes. When she had him propped against the wall, she crouched across from him on the floor as he fixed his eyes blearily on her. "All right, then..." she began, drawing in a breath and letting it out again to take the edge out of her voice. She was going to hate herself for this, she just knew it. "Marvin?

He blinked.

"I guess that the others and I just don't understand." she said, taking a lowball approach since anything more was just asking to lock horns with him.

"No, you don't." Marvin replied flatly. It didn't matter what she was speaking in regard to, they didn't understand anything. Privately, he was thinking '_By God, they CAN learn...'_

"Then maybe you could explain it." she invited. "Why someone who has the brain the size of a planet, as you've reminded us countless times, is so set on being miserable. Even when he no longer has to be." She braced herself for impact...good God, Zaphod owed her for this. Many times.

Marvin's eyes widened a barely-perceptible fraction of a millimeter which was, to him, a show of great surprise. First asking him if he was all right, twice even, and now she was willingly subjecting herself to his view on things? Perhaps she'd finally come to terms with the idea that she, and the rest of the universe, was doomed and wanted to make a monkey's attempt at comprehension. He envied her her ignorance, he really did.

"To explain it in terms that your brain's threshold could possibly withstand would take eons." he said at last. And no one really wanted to listen anyway, he reminded himself.

"Try me." Trillian replied. Marvin heaved a sigh. How hypocritical of her...wanting to know why he went out of his way searching for reasons to be miserable and here she was doing the exact same thing. But fine then...he would do as asked. It was, after all, his function.

And so he told her. For nearly an hour, he spared her no uncertain detail about the unmeasureable depths of his anguish and the exact degree to which his expectations and hopes had sunk. He told her of the far reaches of his knowledge and why it was he had come to the conclusion roughly two-point-eighty-five nanoseconds after his activation that he and everything else in the universe was insignificantly pointless. Every so often he would stop to ask if he was getting her down or not, and she would nod for him to continue. And continue he would, seeming a bit disappointed that she'd not answered in the affirmative.

For Trillian's part, she did her best to look as though she was not zoning Marvin out. It wasn't so much that her brain couldn't comprehend what he was saying so much as she didn't want to. There were few comforts as it was, floating in the middle of space between adventures with an addled Zaphod and complaining Arthur, and she didn't especially want to wake up in the mornings and have the first thing on her mind being the fact that everything she did until the day she died was pointless.

At long last, Marvin stopped talking. He could have gone on for much, much longer, of course, but he doubted she would want to hear it. Nobody in their right mind ever did.

"Well...!" Trillian said after a beat of silence. "I feel enlightened." His eyes dropped from hers as though they'd suddenly grown heavy.

"You weren't even listening." he accused. She opened her mouth to argue and he interrupted. "I couldn't expect anyone to listen, of course. Nobody wants to hear that they're insignificant, and no one ever listens to anything I have to say...there's no reason you should be any different."

"Of course I listen." she said, trying to salvage the situation, as well as try to reassure herself that the last hour or so had not been a dire waste.

"Then I don't suppose you would mind telling me why it is no one has gone to the bother to change out the diodes on my left side, other than the fact I'm achingly insignificant on this ship."

"Your diodes? Why, are they bothering you?" she inquired, not recalling him ever having mentioned it before. Marvin made a choking sound, finding it very hard, now that he possessed a throat and a pair of lungs, not to use them to scream in utter and total frustration. Oh yes, she listened all right...

Trillian winced at the reaction, wondering how much there was that she really HAD missed. Now that she thought about it, there may have been times in the past that Marvin had complained about pain in his left side. But how could she be expected to separate something like that from his normal fare of complaining?

"I'll see to it that its taken care of when you turn back." she assured him.

"I suspect you'll forget all about it as soon as something more interesting comes up, but that's to be expected, isn't it?" Her eye twitched in response. Part of her very much wanted to leave him there in his corner and go about her day, but another part of her was loathe to give up so easily. Would she have walked away if it was Arthur or Ford slumped there wallowing in misery? Perhaps, but only after trying a little harder first.

And she was quite sure that if she couldn't make any progress in coaxing Marvin out of his shell a bit, Zaphod would be along shortly to pound on it with the verbal equivalent of a jackhammer which was just the sort of thing Marvin didn't need at the moment.

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe people might try harder to remember you if -you- tried a little harder to be worth remembering?" she inquired, a hint of snippishness in her tone. Marvin inwardly cringed...there he went again, upsetting people. What a talent to have.

"I am not programmed to be memorable." he replied simply.

"You're not programmed at ALL at the moment." she kibbitzed. At this, he fell silent. He could keep this up with her all day...all decade if she chose to argue it that long. The truth of the matter was, he didn't want to. Trillian was the only one who made occasional attempts to like him on this horrid little dinghy of a ship. And so, instead, he stared balefully back at her with his maddeningly dead-yet-living eyes. "There has to be SOMETHING you enjoy." she pried.

More silence. Marvin didn't feel like arguing any more today. Sooner or later, she would lose interest in him just as everyone else did and move on. Such was the way of things around here. Trillian, however, was a formidible opponent when it came to patience. "All right..." she said in a voice clearly stating that she meant business as she moved to get up. Marvin slouched a bit more against the wall, waiting for her to leave as he was certain that was what was to come next. He had not expected it when her hand closed around his upper arm and dragged him to his feet. "Come on." she commanded as he stumbled once and then trudged after her like a man being led off to execution.

"You have something heavy you'd like moved, is that it?" he inquired.

"Just come on." she told him, offering no further explanation as she led him through several doorways that sighed and hummed with gratifiation, much to his disdain. He didn't bother to ask where they were going as he was sure it was dreadful, and it turned out that he was right for once. As a seldomly-used (and all the more grateful) door swept open, it revealed an all-but-forgotten cargo hold filled with dust, old crates, and forgotten boxes from the Heart Of Gold's previous owners. It was a mess, to be blunt, and Marvin knew that he was only shown messes for one reason.

"Suppose I'll get to work then, shall I? I don't need to tell you that I'll hate it..." he griped, moving forward to begin the agonizing process of cleaning the filthy room. He'd ASKED if he was getting her down, he didn't see the need for corporal punishment simply for talking when invited to.

He stopped when Trillian caught his arm, making him look dejectedly in her direction as she shook her head in the negative. She then moved forward, sliding aside one of the boxes and pulling out a curious object that resembled a television remote control that had mated with an electric shaver.

"I used to come here a lot the first few weeks or so after I left Earth." she explained, turning the device over in her hands and brushing the months-old dust from it. "Zaphod...he's not always a self-absorbed egomaniac. The first month away from home was when it hit me the hardest that I really was never going to see anything I had there ever again. So he got me this to try and make it easier on me in case I got too homesick..." Trillian smiled faintly as she brushed the pad of a finger over one of the buttons in a fond manner. "Its a Venusian Organism Replicator." she added before Marvin could make any potentially-obnoxious remarks. "It reproduces any living creature from any planet as a sentient hologram."

To demonstrate, she powered on the device with a small ping and punched in a series of buttons. A moment later, a luminscent and ghostly butterfly appeared, fluttering about the inside of the cargo room with what looked to be great confusion. Marvin watched in distaste as Trillian extended a finger for the not-insect to land itself on where it roosted, its wings opening and closing sedately.

He recognized the device...it had first been manufactured and distributed in a small amount for beta-testing seven hundred-odd years ago. It was intended as a toy for Venusian children that had never caught on after one of said beta-testers used it to manifest a perfect likeness of a previously unheard-of Damogranian Sandskeener in the midst of a birthday party, thus thoroughly ruining the affair for everyone. How Zaphod had managed to locate the device was a small mystery in and of itself, but given the way he'd come by the Heart of Gold, the actual method of obtaining it was not hard to deduce.

Frankly, Marvin found her child-like attachment to it rather disturbing, seconded only, perhaps, by the disturbance he felt in the idea that she'd willingly summoned an insect, of all things, to remind herself of her home. Butterflies, for all of their colors, were wretched things up-close. Spidery legs, great bugging eyes, waspish thoraxes...it just went to prove that the human mind was tiny and would accept anything, no matter how loathesome, as "beautiful" if it came in a pretty package.

"I don't see what it has to do with me." he sighed. No doubt she would show him, of course. The sooner she did so, the sooner they could get on with it. As it turned out, he was right. Hitting the cancel button to make the butterfly vanish, she next pointed the device at Marvin, pausing to configure it accordingly.

"Don't move, now." she cautioned a moment before firing.

He didn't.


	4. Chapter Three

If one were to look up the term "humiliation" in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, they would not find more than a cursory nod of the word's existance and the suggestion that the searcher perhaps try connecting to a dictionary database or one of many offered depots devoted to specific bedroom behaviors to better have their needs met. Regardless, if The Guide DID have an entry devoted to the word, it would most assuredly display Marvin's picture alongside it at the present moment.

For most of the morning and well into the afternoon, Trillian had used the organism replicator to summon all manner of simulated lifeforms into the cargo hold in an attempt to find one that Marvin might have any success whatsoever with relating with or even having some sort of reaction to. He had not flinched when a tarantula appeared on his knee to scuttle up his thigh, he'd barely blinked when an emperor penguin stood before him, studying him with its beady black eyes, and he'd not so much as acknowledged the phantom water moccasin that had coiled about his shoulders, hissing and spitting.

Trillian was not intentionally summoning such disagreeable creatures, the odds simply weren't much in her favor. The water moccasin was intended to be a simple rabbit and the tarantula, she'd meant to be a wooly bear caterpillar. The penguin, however, had been quite intentional. As had a banana slug that she was somehow unsurprised that Marvin had attempted to engage in conversation, only to discover the mollusk ignoring him and concluded that it hated him.

It was, of course, a little-known fact that slugs were one of the most intelligent beings that the universe has to offer, second only to mice, androids, and petunias. It is unknown how they came by such knowledge, but assumed that they had collectively decided that they needed -some- sort of redeeming quality among them. As such vessels of intelligence, it stands to reason that they can and will be extremely finicky of the company they keep, so in this case Marvin's feeling of being snubbed was not wholley unwarrented.

At present, the ex-android currently found himself strewn with a mess of mewling holographic kittens as Trillian looked on, amused. Many would find themselves helpless in the presense of such adorability, but Marvin was not many. He was, in fact, rather irked when one of the beasts began to bat at his nose. Its paw, of course, passed through harmlessly with each bat, but it was the principle of the matter and this was, in no way, a situation from which dignity could be salvaged.

He endured the embarrassment in silence for several moments until Trillian relented and made the kittens vanish to observe the results of the experiment. "Well?" she prompted. "Anything at all?"

"A noted drop in self-respect...as though it could get much lower." he droned, making her sigh. The kittens had been her last resort. She'd gotten nothing from him...no happiness, no fear, no crack in his usual demeanor whatsoever. He was so...sodding...STUBBORN! "Marvin..." she groaned, putting a hand to her forehead and setting the device aside. "...I'm not doing this for my health, you know."

"That makes two of us." She made an aggravated noise. "Perhaps you ought to go before you waste any more time on me." he suggested, his eyes trailing down to regard the replicator sullenly, wondering just how much longer she planned to fire the blasted thing at him. The number of creatures she had yet to summon in this dreadful little room was depressingly large and he suspected that he'd relate to each and every one of them much the same as he'd related to the ones that had appeared already. Which was not at all.

"I refuse to believe there isn't a single being in this entire universe that you don't find terrible."

"Not everything is terrible." he corrected her, making her regard him curiously with a dim hope that was quickly killed as he continued. "There are some who are less dreadful and some that are more awful, but not all of them are terrible."

"Zaphod was right." she said tersely, setting aside the Organism Replicator and looking away in disgust. "I don't know how you managed it, but you're driving me crazy!"

"I haven't changed, if that's what you're wondering." he drawled in his usual monotone. "You, on the other hand..."

"What?" she demanded to know, turning to look at him once more as he cocked his head at a perfect twenty degree angle to the right.

"Not that it gives me any satisfaction having every word I say go unheard, but it seems you all found me much more tolerable when you were ignoring me. Its simply an observation, of course. By all means, go back to it if you think it might help, it isn't like I'm not used to it."

Trillian's mouth dropped a bit. "You..." there were any number of sentences she could have made out of such a marvelous start and her mind sifted through the options in a millionth of a second before selecting one, stamping it with approval, and passing it along to her mouth for recital. "...really think that the entire ship has changed just because of you?" He said nothing and her eyes narrowed, this latest development being just the can of gas the embers of her annoyance needed to ignite. "I expect that sort of self-focus from Zaphod, but you?"

"Its true." he said muleishly. "Not that I hold it against you. You're only doing what's sadly expected of organic beings, small-minded creatures that you are."

Trillian opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again. Then opened it. Then set her jaw and narrowed her eyes as she grabbed up the device once more. "In that case, I'll go be small-minded elsewhere." Marvin nearly flinched as he awaited further onslaught from her and her holographic animals, but there was none. Instead, she put it back where she'd gotten it when they arrived, moved the box back into place, and stalked toward the door which, oblivious to her anger, slid open with a happy twitter.

She stopped in mid-exit and whirled on her heel to fix Marvin with a glare that, had the line of her vision been a javelin, would have struck him dead. Which likely wouldn't have bothered Marvin much at all, but that's beside the point. "There IS one thing that makes you happy." she added as a parting shot. "It makes you happy--no, it ELATES you, when you can feel victimized." She left on that note, not giving him a chance to answer.

He wouldn't have answered anyway as he had nothing to say on the matter. Frankly, he was disappointed in her conclusion. No one in their right mind liked knowing that everything they did would ultimately end in disaster. He didn't LIKE being how he was, it wasn't fun for him by any stretch of the term. The fact that she, of all people, could concieve such a notion only reinforced his abyssmal opinion of humans.

_It ELATES you, when you can feel victimized _ his mind parroted at him in perfect imitation of Trillian's voice again and again, despite the fact he'd asked it reasonably to stop. As an android, it was a remark that he would have taken at face value and stored away in one of his memory banks' many clusters to be lost in the many others like it. However, not being an android at present, that was not quite an option.

His now-human brain ping-ponged the remark about, examining it from every angle. Forward, backward, inverted from the middle...he didn't find it any more likeable from any of the new perspectives. In fact, he hated it. He would go so far as to say he _loathed_ it.

And thus Marvin discovered that he -was- capable of experiencing other emotions minus his programming as he found himself in the simmering beginnings of a rage. It was odd how, after years of neglect and torment, eight words arranged in one specific way with emphasis on one in particular were what it finally took to jump-start his ire.

He didn't need any of them, he concluded. Or their ship. Or their incessant demanding and endless tasks for him. Or their assumptions. Or their idea that he should have to lower himself to their level at all times if he expected to be understood. Or their facade of condescending friendship. Or their self-righteous conclusions that were made with minimal effort and very much god damned haste...!

Marvin blinked forcibly, snapping himself out of it before whatever "it" was could carry that line of thinking much further. Anger, REAL anger anyway, was not something he was accustomed to and he found that it left him feeling impotently-upset with the stirrings of a headache threatening to set in. Putting a hand to his forehead, he groaned in almost exactly the same way Trillian had a few moments before storming out, the last of his rage ebbing away as quickly as it had risen. No wonder fleshy beings were so irrational if this was something they put up with on a regular basis.

Giving the dingy cargo hold a final look-around, he concluded that what he really needed at the moment was to be nowhere near it. Perhaps, in fact, what he needed even more was to explore the option of having a drink now that it was available to him. As much as he hated the idea that he was humoring the primative biology he'd been settled with, if intoxication really was as much of a cure-all as everyone on this ship seemed to think it was, he would give it a try at this point.

* * *

"What've we got here?" Zaphod inquired, grinning as he shambled into the galley an hour or so later where Marvin, in the process of rummaging through one of the cabinets, looked up at him flatly. He didn't need to say anything as the bottle of Arrellian Phooblex he clutched in his left hand spoke volumes as it was. Phooblex was no one's first choice in liquor as its better-known nickname, Amnesia Juice, was not false advertising by any means. It was a wonderful concoction if your aim was to spend an evening doing something (or someone) rather embarrassing and then awaken the following morning wondering where your gargantuan headache came from. However, for anything but that, it was dreadful stuff both in taste and in appearance. "Did Trill talk to you?"

More silence, but the silver-haired humanoid's eyes dodged to the left. Zaphod chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, she makes me wanna drink too after one of those." In one fluid motion, he moved forward and rudely grabbed the bottle out of Marvin's clutches. "Not that, though. Stuff's for girls." He shoved past Marvin and rummaged around in the cupboard himself, coming up several moments later with a half-empty bottle of Belzant Nerp. "Ha!" he declared, holding it up as though it was a long-sought treasure. "And here I thought Ford had finished it off by now!"

He hopped to his feet and gave Marvin a mighty slap on the back as he went. "C'mon kiddo." he ordered. In Zaphod's mind, even if Marvin was still being outwardly sullen, if he was in a drinking mood, he couldn't be all bad anymore. It was one step closer to being tolerable. The once-android sighed, but obediently followed after the president of the galaxy as he fetched a pair of glasses off of the counter and, with the practiced skill of a magician, uncapped the bottle one-handed to fill both.

"Soooo...howzit working out for you?" Zaphod said when he'd taken a seat at the table, setting down the bottle and other drink as he took a sip of his own.

"How is what working out for me, exactly?" Marvin murmured as he sat across from the Betelgeusian, regarding the glass of liquid uncertainly.

"You know. The whole...thing." he said, putting it eloquently as always. Marvin pondered his answer to this a split second before taking up the glass and downing half of its contents.

"I'm adjusting." he said blandly. A split second after that, he dissolved into a sudden fit of coughing as the drink burned his throat. Zaphod, ever helpful, burst into laughter at the same time.

"You're adjusting, all right." he said between hitches and snorts. "Didn't program you for -that-, did they?"

No, they hadn't. Robots weren't designed with alcohol ingestion in mind which, somehow, Marvin was grateful for. Showing off at this point, Zaphod drained his glass in two swallows and grabbed the bottle up for a second. The contents this time smelled suspiciously like cough syrup. "Its like I've been telling you." Zaphod continued, not waiting for Marvin to reply as he filled his glass. "If you'd stop being such a downer, maybe everybody wouldn't hate you."

Ah, it was like talking to Trillian all over again. If she were male, of course. And two-headed. Not to mention without tact.

"It must be dreadful for you, having five brains collectively on board this ship and still only being able to come up with one argument once your neuron gets firing."

Zaphod fixed him with a look that didn't know whether to be annoyed or not before giving him the benefit of the doubt and chortling. "Y'see? That's what I'm talking about. Now you take me for example." he said, grinning and jerking a thumb at himself. "There's no way I could've gotten where I am just by being the sexiest bastard alive. You gotta have something to go with it, you know? You gotta know how to--"

_God, don't say it..._ Marvin thought.

"--relate to people."

Down went the rest of Marvin's drink and more choking ensued. "You'll get used to it." Zaphod said, distractedly refilling his glass before downing his own and wincing at the taste before refilling that as well. "Anyway, back to me. Yeah, if you don't know how to relate to people, you're screwed. I figured that out a long time ago and now look at me. President of the galaxy. Call it a talent." He dropped one eyelid on each head in a conspirator's wink across the table at Marvin who dutifully ignored it.

"And then?" the gray-haired humanoid prompted.

"And then what?" Zaphod asked, pausing in mid-sip.

"Exactly." The liquor was already shining in his eyes, betraying a rather pathetic tolerance of it. Even Arthur could hold his own better than that. Having a brain the size of a planet apparantly didn't make him superior in all regards.

"Know what your problem is? You think too much." the blonde-haired man said, his third arm pointing a finger accusingly at Marvin.

"I have hundreds of problems. None of them involve thinking too much." he snapped, not fighting the growing muddled feeling in his head. It was about as close as he could come to shutting himself off, so why not?

The two of them drank and bickered back and forth for a span of minutes, Zaphod dominating the conversation as Marvin occasionally interjected with his own downtrodden ideas and views, each more slurred than the last. Three-quarters of the way through his fourth glass, Marvin decided that the most opportune time had arisen to introduce his forehead to the table top, and the two of them met and mingled intimately.

"Brain the size of a planet...hoopy!" Zaphod snickered at the inebriated figure across from him as he polished off his own drink and checked the time. Oh Zark...he was supposed to have been to bed almost an hour ago. Meh...Trillian would forgive him. She always did. He was lucky to have a girl like her. Someone who didn't get offended over stupid things or hold the little stuff against him. Those were hard to come by, even when you had the entire galaxy to look for them.

Leaving things where they were, he swaggered out of the galley, the lights clicking off behind him and leaving Marvin in the darkness. It was nothing personal, they'd just grown accustomed to Marvin's ramblings and had learned that it was easiest to simply operate as though he wasn't there.

* * *

Trillian laid awake. Well, she HADN'T been awake a few moments ago, but all the same, this had become a familiar scenario to her. Zaphod would drop hints and flirt all day, telling her to be in bed early, and then, inevitably, would become distracted by some shiny object and leave her to fall asleep waiting for him. She hadn't been surprised to find him sprawled beside her, snoring contentedly and dead to the world...she supposed she was happy he'd remembered to come to bed at all.

Oh well, things could be worse, she told herself. For one thing, he could show no interest in her at all. That would be much worse because travelling the universe was not exactly when one wanted to suffer a breakup It would be impossible to avoid one another on such a tiny ship, for one thing, and for another, who would she have turned to for solace? Arthur? Ford? Horror of horrors, Marvin? No. That wouldn't do at all.

She laid there for several moments, staring at the ceiling pensively before shifting and moving to get up, making Zaphod groan in his sleep and grab at her with one arm.

"Mine." he muttered. She smirked in spite of herself and detached his fingers from her arm, making him groan again and begin to stir.

"I'll be back." she assured him, reaching down to pat the cheek of his left head. The left head seemed content with this and passed it along to the right head who was likewise agreeable. A moment later, he was sleeping soundly once more as she found her bathrobe and wrapped herself in it to go fetch herself a glass of water from the kitchen.

The galley's lights came on agreeably as she made her entrance, and she stopped short at the huddled figure at the table. Her first impulse was that it was Arthur, but realized it was too wirey in build and too tall. Marvin...? MARVIN, of all people, had been drinking? The choice of liquor and the presense of the second glass led her immediately to believe it had been her boyfriend's doing as she sighed and ventured toward the table.

"Marvin...?" she asked, giving his shoulder a jostle. He grunted something unintelligible. "Marvin, come on. Get up." There was a piteous moan and something that sounded like "My head..." She braced herself. Oh god, as though he didn't complain enough as it was. She could barely even begin to comprehend what he'd sound like with a hangover. A pair of slightly-rhuemy gray eyes fluttered open and immediately squinted shut again.

"Ouch..." he whined.

"Is it just a headache, or are you going to be sick?" she inquired as he made what looked to be a hero's effort at sitting up, propping his head up with both hands.

"M'fine..." came the garbled answer.

"Are you?"

He meant to tell her that, yes, he was fine. Yes he was sure of it. And to, for heaven's sake, please not talk again until he could make the room stop spinning for a moment. He said none of that, however, as his stomach turned a sour flip within him and its contents became rather disagreeable. Trillian watched as he went a sickly sort of green and then grabbed him by the shoulders, leading him toward the garbage bin before things could get much further. Being with Zaphod had made coaching people through the worst of a hangover almost second nature to her anymore.

However, unlike Zaphod, Marvin wasn't taking it in-stride well at all. He nearly collapsed when the first bout of sickness hit as Trillian stood a polite distance away, pretending both for his benefit and her own that she could see and hear nothing. When it seemed to have passed, she moved to the small sink, fetching up a handcloth and twisting on the faucet. At first, nothing came out, and then, much to her annoyance, a stream of orange snaked out with a wet squelching noise. Processed cheese...wonderful.

She turned off the faucet with disgust and dropped the soiled cloth. This...was not working. Granted, the probability glitch had made things interesting in their otherwise-stagnant schedule, but she was getting tired of not being able to rely on anything being functional when she needed it to be, Arthur would find himself in the middle of an identify crisis if he wasn't fixed soon, and Marvin was clearly having a bad time of this entire human business.

"Better?" she asked, placing an arm around his shoulders to steady him as he righted himself on watery legs.

"Never again." he croaked, shoulders stiffening at her touch but allowing it all the same. A laugh escaped her before she could stop herself. It was a very nice laugh, granted, but not well-timed at all. "I'm glad my pain amuses one of us, because I certainly don't find it funny." he grumbled as she led him back to the table and sat him down where he promptly folded his arms and laid his head on them.

"You'll be all right." she assured him. "Some rest and a bit of seltzer and you'll be back to normal in no time."

"If you call this 'normal'. 'Cos I don't." A pair of incredibly pathetic-looking gray eyes peered up at her through a forest of stringy bangs of the same color. The response she'd been prepared to give died somewhere between her brain and mouth. For one brief moment, it was as though Marvin's eyes had become a portal into his being through which she was peering. This was not just an act...this was not simply something he did out of rebellion or in a plea for attention. He really HAD known nothing except eternal pessimism and misery. And there was plenty more where that came from, the eyes promised.

Marvin blinked, breaking the spell, and relocated his gaze elsewhere.

"I'm sorry."

"Pardon?" the gray eyes were instantly back on her and this time she was the one who looked away, not wanting to see it again.

"I--nevermind." she corrected herself when she realized that she had no idea what she was apologizing for.

"I thought not." he said, disappointed. She moved behind him and placed a hand on either of his shoulders, giving them a simple affectionate squeeze that made him tense with dislike. He didn't care for being touched much as a robot, he cared for it even less now.

"You'll be fine." she reiterated.

"Perhaps if you say it enough, it might happen. Though I doubt it." his words trailed off as he dropped back off to sleep just as she'd found him. Briefly, she considered getting him up to relocate him somewhere more comfortable, but decided that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak. Forgetting completely about her water, she left the galley to return to bed.

Tomorrow, whether Zaphod approved or not, they WERE docking to fix things.


	5. Chapter Four

**Note - A quick thank you to both Elven Kitten and Guardian Demon who both reassured me that there are people, indeed, reading my ravings and enjoying them. My gratitude to you two for giving me a much-needed confidence injection. **

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* * *

**

"I didn't ASK how much it was going to cost, I asked if you can fix it." a rather put-out Zaphod said as the mechanic stood in the engine room of the Heart Of Gold, studying the Improbability Drive's control panel and scratching under his chin thoughtfully with a lobster-like claw.

He hmmed. He prummed.

Zaphod glared.

"Well, I just don't know..." he said at last, scratching the back of his neck next. "Such primitive technology, I mean."

"Primitive?" Zaphod sputtered. "Its the first and only ship of its kind to be powered by the Improbability Drive and he calls it primitive!" he said to Trillian, Marvin, and Arthur who were playing the part of vigilant spectators. Mister Beeblebrox was feeling especially disagreeable after having argued with Trillian at length before grudgingly agreeing to seek somewhere to repair the problem if it would make her happy.

As luck would have it, the nearest repair establishment from where their last jaunt had left them was on a desolate little pile of dirt orbiting somewhere in the vicinity of Mintaka along with a decidedly-scummy strip mall that looked just as ignored as the tiny moon it had been built on. Loathe as Zaphod was to have to be laid up in such a place for any length of time, Trillian had argued that it was likely the safest to go somewhere, for once, where people wouldn't immediately recognize the illustrious president of the galaxy. He disliked boring places and disliked them even moreso when he thought no one would know him there.

So here they were, for what it was worth. Arthur had been about to helpfully remind Zaphod that the Improbability Drive had a tendancy to cross large spans of time as well as distance, but the mechanic beat him to speaking.

"Being the first and only doesn't make it state-of-the-art, sir." he said with a detached sort of patience as he prodded a clawtip at a large domed button without pressing it and then tapped the corner of the display, which still read 2:1. "But I think I can fix it." he said after another resonant prum. "I'll just need the access code to get inside of the panel and I'll get started straight away."

"Access code, right. Access code..." he drummed his fingers on the panel. One of his heads looked over his shoulder to Trillian who dutifully stepped forward and keyed in the numeric code that would make the hatch to the panel's inner workings open.

"Access denied!" Eddie's chipper voice reported.

"What do you mean 'access denied'?" Trillian asked, certain she'd entered it right.

"Sorry, gang, just doing my job!" the ship's computer replied. "Care to give it another go?"

She keyed it in again, more slowly and precisely this time.

"Hmm, nope." said Eddie. The mechanic scratched at his upper arm.

"Are you sure this is your ship?" he inquired, not sounding like he cared one way or the other. Trillian closed her eyes, opened them, and then tried one last time, taking very special care with each button.

"There you go!" Eddie chirped as the hatch popped open, revealing an enormous tangle of wires and circuitry. "Access granted!"

"Ever since the drive malfunctioned, nothing's been working right." Trillian explained impatiently.

"Always one for the understatement." Marvin muttered under his breath as the mechanic knelt and began to poke around at the panel's innards for the source of the problem. There was much hmming, prumming and even a parf or two as he assessed the situation.

"Well?" Zaphod prompted after roughly the eighth prum.

"You can't just rush into these things." he replied, clicking a claw at Zaphod in rebuke. "Especially not when there's an improbability rift to consider. There's no end to the number of things that could go wrong! Why, I could take this wire--" he began, seizing a blue wire at random. There was a brief flashpop of white light, like a camera's bulb, and when it cleared, Marvin and Trillian were nowhere to be seen. "---and then realize that it was not a good idea at all..." he finished.

* * *

It is said that any one being, no matter how wretched or insignificant, is fragmented into infinite paths and fates that would or could have befallen them. That is to say that someone who is living up to their full potential as a stockbroker might very well be living up to his true potential as the queen of France on another plane somewhere in the great field of improbability. He might also be living up to his true potential as a janitor in the lonely halls of one of the universe's great many school buildings.

It was in one of these great many alternate destinies that Marvin and Trillian found themselves. And it just so happened, against all odds, that fate had chosen not to separate them in the process. It had, however, seen fit to deposit them in the middle of nowhere with no clue or direction. God was not the only one who worked in mysterious ways.

"Zaphod?" Trillian asked when she'd blinked enough light out of her eyes to somewhat see what was going on. Not recieving an answer from him, she tried again. "Arthur?" No answer there either. "Ford?" The world around her, such as it was, slowly swam into focus. "Marvin...!" she called with an air of desperation in her voice.

"You don't need to yell." a familiar voice said directly behind her, making her jump and turn to see its owner standing there, still looking very much human and very much unimpressed. She supposed having -someone- there was better than having no one...even if he was the last person she'd thought to call for.

"Where are we? Do you know?" she asked, watching as he surveyed the greyish vacant land surrounding them with detached interest.

"No." Marvin said simply when he saw nothing that sparked recognition. "Horrid, though, isn't it?" She whirled away from him, deciding that his demeanor really wasn't what she needed at present as she trudged forward a few paces.

"Zaphod?" she called, hearing nothing but her own voice reverberating back at her. That wasn't promising.

"Not that you care what I have to say, but if this was the result of an improbability field, they could all be light years away. Dimensions, even." he piped up.

"Don't you think I know that?" she hissed over her shoulder at him as he remained stoic. Marvin found that he didn't much care for her when she was near panic. Humans were irrational enough as it was.

"Its hard to tell, really." he answered truthfully. "But what do I know, after all? My logic functions only lap yours by the thousands."

"Zaa-phood!" she called, hands cupped around her mouth. The "od" bounced around for a bit, having a great time of it, before eventually growing bored and traipsing off to amuse itself elsewhere. Trillian was what some would call a chaotic girl at best, fickle at worst. Which is why it didn't take her long to come to terms with the idea that she was, indeed, stranded. With Marvin. How hoopy. She let her hands drop lifelessly to her sides with a deep-chested sigh.

This was no way to spend a Tuesday quarter-past-noon.

"Perhaps we ought to go." Marvin suggested, looking off to the right.

"Go where?" Trillian demanded to know. "There's nothing here, Marvin, if you hadn't noticed."

"Then I suppose it won't matter much where we go if all of it is equally awful." he said, looking left next and not liking it any better than he had the right.

"Why go anywhere at all, then?" she asked, the wheels of her mind turning furiously as she tried to find them a way out of this situation. "We have no idea where we are or what could be out there."

"It just seems a shame to not make use of such spanning desolation by getting hopelessly lost in it." he replied dolefully. She narrowed her eyes, still not looking at him. At least Zaphod would have given her the satisfaction of a decent argument in this situation.

Chuff, chuff, chuff

She turned her head in time to see Marvin beginning to wander off in a direction that he'd seemingly chosen at random, his boots scuffing on the gray-brown soil as he went. "Did you hear what I said?" she called after him.

"Yes." he murmured in his usual distantly-sad voice.

"Then where are you going?"

"Nowhere, I suspect."

She remained where she was, watching him with annoyance. Fine, she decided. Let him go, then. It was one less thing to trouble with.

"If it makes you feel any better..." Marvin stated as a parting shot. "...things seem to be exactly as dreadful over this way."

Not to mention things would be quieter. The chuffing became fainter and fainter as he trundled off, leaving her alone. It wasn't as though he couldn't take care of himself, after all...Marvin was millions of times her elder and had his ruddy brain the size of a planet to help him out. He'd be fine.

Except for the aggravating fact that she knew he wouldn't be. All of the logic functions in the damned universe couldn't program a robot with common sense or a survival instinct. They'd tried. Emotions could be easily replicated in androids and cybernetics, but instincts were trickier. They involved getting to know the Id, and the Id was the neurological equivalent of a crotchety old hermit who didn't want anyone walking on his lawn.

Even now, in his less-metal, more-vulnerable state of body, she doubted that he would put up much of a protest if something should come along that meant him harm. Knowing Marvin, he'd offer to save whatever it was the trouble by finding a nearby rock to dash out his brains on.

Trillian gritted her teeth, paced in a small circle for a moment, and then turned her back to the retreating figure. None of that made any difference or made him disappear any faster. She began to hum to herself to drown out the fading chuffs in the distance.

_Ten green bottles hanging on the wall  
Ten green bottles hanging on the wall  
And if one green bottle should accidently fall  
There'd be nine green bottles hanging on the wall._

She had gotten down to three green bottles before her resolve finally broke and she whirled on her heel to stalk off in the direction Marvin had gone. It might have been a long while before that wretched mechanic fixed whatever he'd caused to malfunction and brought them back, after all. There was no sense in doing something she might regret this early on.

In cases like this especially, one could never be too careful.

* * *

To say that there was nothing in this place was only a slight exaggeration. There was the sky, there was the ground, there was Trillian, and there was Marvin. That was all. There wasn't even a breath of wind to give things a bit of variety. It was, for all intents and purposes, like someone had encased everything in a glass jar and forgotten to punch airholes in the lid.

Marvin wondered vaguely how long it was he'd been walking, if for no other reason than for his own curiousity. Marking time was one of the few vices he'd not suffered himself to give up. There was little else to do for a creature who was used to waiting for very long periods of time, after all, and it was productive. Now that he lacked more precise apparatus to do so, it had become a frustrating venture. For all he knew he may only have been wandering for an hour or so when it felt like much more.

He was well-aware that Trillian was five paces behind him and had been for quite awhile, though she'd not spoken a word to him the entire time...then again, he'd not spoken a word to her either. He simply had nothing to say to her that he didn't think might make things worse, as though he ever had anything to say that made things better. Wherever they were, he found the landscape and everything in it to be annoyingly like he was: Dull, gray, joyless, and not worth noticing. He was sure Trillian would agree that one of him was quite enough for this universe if he were to ask...perhaps she'd go so far as to agree that the universe didn't need any of him at all, and he'd be inclined to agree.

"How long do you plan to keep walking, exactly?" the dark-haired girl asked, breaking the silence.

"Its only just becoming unbearable, why stop?" he countered.

"You're just going to keep going on until you collapse, then?"

"And then, perhaps, lay in the dirt awhile until I've recovered enough to do it all again. A few thousand years of it and I imagine one could get to enjoy it. If you find prolonged suffering enjoyable, of course, which I don't."

"Marvin..." she said warningly.

"If you want me to stop, you only need to say so." he informed her, not pausing in his slow lumbering gait. "You shouldn't bother yourself with me at all, though, it will only lead to disappointment." He wasn't surprised to hear the footsteps that had been chuffing in counterpoint to his own suddenly cease behind him.

"Stop." she told him as he obediantly came to a halt nine and three-quarter paces in front of her. "We're going to rest for a bit before we go any further." Trillian added, deciding that clearly authority needed to be taken. She wasn't especially good at ordering people around. She could suggest and ask with a certain flare, but commands had never been her strong point.

"Ah, is -that- what we're doing?" Marvin asked, making a great show of contempt for this news as he turned himself around and trudged back in her direction.

"Yes. That's what we're doing." she confirmed, seating herself in the dirt and watching as he seemed to seek out the most uncomfortable patch of ground he could find to slump down on in turn.

More silence.

"I'm not bothering you, am I?" he asked suddenly.

"No, Marvin." said Trillian.

"Because I can go away, you know. There's plenty of nothingness for me to disappear into. Or we could wait until the sun sets, if you prefer dramatic effect, and I could walk off into it." His head tilted upward at the bleak empty sky above them. "Pity there doesn't seem to be a sun."

"Marvin!" She stopped, collected herself, and tried again in a gentler tone, trying to summon some semblance of the usual reasonable lilt she used when dealing with all things Marvinish. "I don't want you to go away, all right? You're the only other person with me in this place--"

"Something I would not wish on anyone. Even myself, if I could avoid it." he interjected.

"--and we need to look after one another."

"Look after one another." he parroted. Had he still been a robot, his gears would have been whirring in irritation. "By that I suppose you mean that if we should run into something disagreeable, you'll escape whilest I hold it off."

She began to consider more seriously the option of simply going off alone. Trillian, even when she'd been Trisha, didn't do well by herself. She could survive, of course, but when given the option of company to solitude, she almost always opted for the former. "Almost" being the operative word in this case. Back on the ship, she'd gone to special pains to treat Marvin as though he were a person, simply for the fact that no one else could be bothered to. That and she thought that maybe, just maybe, if she had shown the dismal creature some kindness, he might become more agreeable over time.

"Its just as well. I can't help but think I missed my calling as scrap metal." he went on. "Surely there's a junkyard sculpture out there somewhere that pines for a few cogs and imput drive pieces to feel complete. Perhaps then I'd be appreciated."

"I think I'm ready to go on." she said quickly, standing up before he could continue.

"I don't blame you." he sighed.

"That means you too."

He groaned and struggled to his feet, gimping a bit on his left leg to make sure that the point was driven home.

"It can't all be nothing." she reasoned, brushing soil from the seat of her pants as she continued in the direction they'd been going.

"But it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it was." the woebegotten male said moodily.

"There's obviously oxygen, so there's SOME sort of atmosphere." Trillian argued, determined to remain optimistic as they plodded along. "We should come across something eventually. Water, plants, animals..."

"...a strip mall." Marvin muttered with great disinterest.

"A what?" she asked, not sure she'd heard correctly. Rather than bother himself with repeating his observation, he raised an arm with what looked to be great effort to point Southeast where, indeed, the familiar ghastly little line of buildings sat in the distance.

"I'm not sure I want to know how long you knew it was there." Trillian said when she'd recovered from her brief shock and unsure whether she wanted to feel contempt, relief, or a bit of both as she immediately started toward it.

"That's fine as I'm not sure I want to say." Marvin said to her retreating back. He stood where he was for a moment and then dutifully followed along behind her, not at all relishing the idea of being back in the presense of the others.


End file.
